General rules

Canon

Terminology

The Lord of the Rings is not a trilogy, and is arguably (and according to Tolkien himself) not a novel either. Use the words "legendarium" (for the story as a whole), "book", "books" (both for LotR, its volumes and the 6 books — but make clear which you are referring to), "volume", "volumes" (for the three volumes of The Lord of the Rings).

Abbreviations of names of books, movies, series, people, etc. should not be used in articles or lists (e.g. write out The Lord of the Rings, not LotR).

Take note of correct spellings, including diacritical marks, e.g. Éomer, not Eomer. Accents are not optional and if you are unsure of the alt code to insert the character just click the proper character below the editing box. An easy way to verify the correct accents is to type the non-accented version of the word into the search box and you will be redirected to the correct term, which you can then copy and paste.

Take note of correct singular and plural forms of terms: e.g. an Urukor one of the Uruk-hai, not an Uruk-hai; "Uruk-hai" means "Orc-folk")

Italicize non-English terms for objects and creatures (e.g. palantír, crebain), but not for peoples (e.g. Eldar). In general, follow the books.

Avoid adaptation-derived terms to describe the original versions of characters, concepts, etc. Only use those terms to refer to their counterparts in adaptations, and point out that the terms are original to the adaptation (e.g. "Army of the Dead" should only be used in an adaptation context; use "Oathbreakers" or "Dead Men of Dunharrow" elsewhere).

Use capital letters when writing about the races of Middle-earth, but lower-case when writing about individuals or groups of individuals i.e. Elves, Dwarves, Men, Hobbits, Orcs, Istari, Valar, etc. (e.g. "the hobbits walked down the road", "Hobbits have hairy feet", "the hobbit jumped over the fence", "the Elf lord bowed before them", "the orcs were running over the plain").

Do not use "human" or "humans" when describing a concept inside the legendarium; instead write "Men" or "men", "Man"/"man", or "Mannish" (for usage of capital vs. lower-case letters, see above).

Dates and Years

For dates, always used Date Month and not Month Date, i.e. "4 March" and not "March 4".

Use [[Third Age 3019|T.A. 3019]] when linking to years. There are templates that automate this: {{TA|3019}} gives T.A.3019, {{TA|3019|n}} gives 3019.

For articles with only a few dates (or only a few differing from the stated standard reckoning for the article) it is easiest to just spell out the reckoning period in full; 'Fourth Age 6'.

Categories

Before creating a category, please check to see if there is a same existing category or subcategory.

Generally, do not categorize things twice (e.g. Since Category:Dúnedain is the parent category of Category:Dúnedain of the North, only the latter should be used in the Aragorn II article). However, if two or more categories from different sub-branches apply, then it would be proper to use both.

Italics

Always use italics for titles of books, series, movies, game, etc. (e.g. The Silmarillion, The Lord of the Rings, etc.)

External links

Remember that the External links serves as further reading, not advertisement. Tolkien Gateway is not a link farm nor a web directory. Do not link to ten or more sites. There are exceptions to this case, but a vast quantity of external links are usually frowned upon. Three to four links are usually enough.

The following sites should be linked: Official sites (that majorly relate to the topic), articles about the subject of article on other encyclopedias or vast resources (e.g. Encyclopedia of Arda, The Thain's Book, Wikipedia, and sites that contain neutral and accurate information that has not been mentioned in the article. On controversial articles that contain multiple points of view, have at least equal amount of sites presenting each POV with a detailed explanation.

The following sites that are occasionally acceptable: professional reviews reviewing books, movies, etc. (e.g. IMDb), ONE very informative fansite about the subject of article, web directory full of informative fansites.

The following should be avoided and are generally not acceptable: fanlistings (because they are not generally informative), multiple fansites, web directories (for exceptions, see above).

The following should not be linked on articles under any circumstance: sites with unverified original research, any form of advertising (whether it's a site or a product), any social networking sites, etc.

Images

Uploaded images must be related to J.R.R. Tolkien and his works, the one exception being if you want to upload an image for your userpage, usually of yourself, that is acceptable.

We are currently fairly lenient on the file size of images. If the image is above our maximum file size limit (you will see this after clicking the upload button) simply click save anyway. Keep in mind there is no need for extensive quality as our images are used primarily in articles. However we would prefer too high of quality opposed to too low of quality as we can always reduce the quality later.

Always tag the image you're uploading with image copyright tags. If you are not sure of the copyright, then it is best not to upload it.

Always include a description of the image: where the image came from, what it is, etc.

If available, place book illustrations first in the article, especially in infoboxes. Screenshots and other images from adaptations properly belong in an Adaptations section.

Do not change the images in the Infoboxes without discussing it on the talk page.

If the image is of an illustration, attempt to find the artist's title of the image and upload it as "Artist Name - Title of Illustration.jpg"

Categorize the image properly. These include "Category:Images by (artist's name)", and categories for all characters, objects and events.

If you're an artist yourself and you like your work featured on this website, it's advisable to upload images of minor characters only. We have sufficient pictures of Aragorn II, but NONE of Aragorn I.